This is a guest post by Justine Sones.
The other day, I had the pleasure of catching up with a friend I hadn’t spoken to in over a year. Nothing bad happened to keep us from talking, just life. One of those life events was that she had a baby, and as I know all too well, postpartum is an absolute vortex.
I’m about six years away from the stage she’s at in her parenting journey, and as far as child development and rearing goes, we are living very different experiences. I remember being in the wildly exhausted and sensory-overloaded first years so vividly. No one was sleeping through the night. The spawn required constant supervision so that nobody stuck a tongue in a socket or put dog poop in a mouth. Someone always needed something from me.
On one of those days, I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car feeling like an absolute sack of tired garbage, with the baby and toddler in the backseat. We were waiting in a parking lot while my husband ran into a store, and I had my window open to relieve some of the echo of the kids crying/yelling. Again. For reasons I could do nothing to help with.
I looked over to the vehicle parked beside me and saw another mom sitting in the front seat with two kids who looked to be early elementary age sitting in the back. Her window was also open, we made eye contact, she gave me a sympathetic smile, and I said, “please tell me it gets better.”
She didn’t say that.
What she said was, “it gets different,” and we both laughed because I knew exactly what she meant — and, it helped.
The hope of different can sometimes be enough hope to make a difference.
Fast forward seven years—my kids are now five and seven, and those newborn days are no longer. And as I chatted with my friend, I talked about some of the fun I’m having with my kids at the ages they are now. It feels strange to reflect on those early years. I know my kids are still so young and there is a lot of life to do — and — it’s hard to believe that those years are already over.
The whole “days are long but years are short” cliche is apparently true.
At times I feel a little shell-shocked by the passing of time, and grief for moments I won’t get back, especially because they didn’t always go the way I’d wanted them to go and there are no do-overs. I definitely don’t romanticize those earliest parenting years because I know exactly how much I struggled with the baby and toddler stages. Even with the perspective of those days being over and feeling brief in hindsight, when I talk to someone who is in the midst of the sleepless nights and full dependence, I know what they mean.
It feels never-ending, until one day, it doesn’t.
I didn’t imagine early motherhood coming with so many tears and emotional outbursts (from me). Instead of the baby years being painted with giggles and heart-eyed moments, my memories carry the weight of postpartum depression, anxiety, and shame.
And. I know that it wasn’t all bad, even though my brain seems biased towards recalling the hard times. There were so many great pockets nestled in there, even if I wasn’t always able to take them in.
So when my brain starts to ruminate on wishing that I hadn’t yelled as much, or that I’d been more available for tension-free snuggles, I close my eyes and try to switch the channel by focusing on a memory of being calm and present during a meltdown, or falling asleep together on the couch.
The cost of my grief was presence, and when I look back, I feel like I missed out on something during those first few years—And.
I don’t want to miss the magic of the years I’m in right now because I’m stuck dwelling on the past and the things I can’t change.
These days, I’m trying to focus on presence and the things I want more of instead of dwelling on old, unmet expectations. I love that my kids tell me excitedly about what they learned at school, that they still let themselves relax full weight into my arms when I hug them, that they still want snuggles at night, and that sometimes, my kisses are still enough to make their hurts go away. I know that if I spend this stage stuck thinking about the one that passed, then I’ll probably spend ages nine and eleven wishing I had been more present for five and seven.
I’ve processed and sorted through and replayed the millions of ways things could have gone, and when I paint the full picture of those butterfly effects, none of them would get me to where I am now. When I find myself sitting in a hard place — because, life — I remind myself:
It will get different.
It always does.
— Justine Sones
Wise Women’s Council—Class of 2022
Startup Parent
Justines Sones is a stress management and self-care coach who writes about feelings, boundaries, and life. She helps burned-out humans reduce overwhelm and get more space to breathe, think, and sleep.
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